


the suffering that is weathered

by scullyseviltwin



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, season 4 compliant, season 4 fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 16:36:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10880718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullyseviltwin/pseuds/scullyseviltwin
Summary: The magnitude of what they’re discussing seems as though it shouldn’t fit within the walls of 221B.





	the suffering that is weathered

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to [Amanda](http://victuuriplease.tumblr.com/) and [Erin](http://thescienceofobsession.tumblr.com/) for their assistance with this piece.

It’s quiet inside of 221B, the hour gone just past nine. The only sound is the paper-scratch of cardboard being dragged across the floor, and stacks of documents being rifled through.

John is seated on the floor, his back against the new, stiff leather sofa. There’s a pillow beneath his behind, his legs spread out into a vee before him, a cardboard box resting between. His head low, he rifles through the contents, pulling a file here, a stack of disorganized paper there.

He pauses, fanning through the sheaf. After a sigh, he holds them up for Sherlock. “This is just financials from 2008, before we went with the Excel spreadsheets.”

Sherlock’s eyes flit to the papers and then back to the box that he’s been carefully poring over. “Bin them.”

His eyes roll, almost of their own accord. “Shred them, you mean.”

“Whatever.”

John digs down into the box, sorts through the rest of the paper. He knows that he doesn’t really have the time to go through all of the items in all of the boxes they’d had stored down in C, but he’d also rather not have either of their identities stolen. There are plenty of press and citizens alike who’ve been known to root through their garbage. He begins separating the papers the best he can, some into the “bin” pile, more into the “shred” pile.

John shifts, hooking his heel around the corner of a box just to his right and trying to kick it within reach; Sherlock takes pity on him and slides it over. Upon opening it, John’s eyes are assaulted by more unorganized detritus. Why they ever thought that they could clear out 221C in a day, is completely beyond him. But they have to get through it, he knows, as the electrician is coming first thing in the morning to begin restoration of the space.

Insurance had paid Mrs. Hudson quite handsomely after the incident with the explosion–supplemented, of course, by Mycroft–and it had been Sherlock who suggested finally converting the garden-level flat into a livable space. The insurance payout coupled with the short sale of John’s flat outside the city had left them enough to finance a hefty renovation, with enough leftover to take care of most of John’s past debts.

They’d spoken with an architect–recommended, strangely enough, by Anderson–and they’d begun working with him shortly after the explosion. The floor plan was to be open, another bedroom added where the den had once been, the fireplace restored. John had only needed moderate convincing to agree to move into the space.

It was a strange miasma of indecisiveness. It felt foreign, even the notion of being inside the building and not being in the B flat, but the conversion made sense. Rosie was growing like a weed, and it wouldn’t be long before they would have outstayed the welcome that Sherlock had extended. Still, even being just down the steps from Sherlock felt somehow wrong, in a way that being clear across London never had. When John was in Baker Street, John should only be scant feet away from Sherlock Holmes.

That’s just how it was. John’s mind couldn’t parse the distance. 

And being back at all, well, that was something else entirely, something that pricked under his skin, though not in a completely bad manner. It was as though something was warring within him, spurring him to make some sort of decision he couldn’t put his finger on just yet.

And thus, he’d put up some modicum of a fight. 

“The flat in Islington is just…” John had tried to argue, but the withering look Sherlock had given him had stoppered up the last of his feeble arguments. With a huff of resignation, John had simply asked when it would be possible for he and Rosie to move in properly.

It was Sherlock who suggested that the house be sold sooner rather than later, and that John should reoccupy his old room until the basement flat was adequately livable. “Can’t take more than a year.” And just like that, Mrs. Hudson had agreed to the changes, happy to comply with a renovation if she didn’t have to pay out of pocket for it. 

It was all a bit too close to being properly domestic for he and Sherlock, though. Or, in John’s opinion, they were shifting closer and closer to a domestic partnership, a living situation much like they had prior to Sherlock’s disappearance, but now with added scars, ghosts, baggage, and, well… children. 

Not being in the same flat with Sherlock was unacceptable, but reclaiming his old space in 221B was equally as faulty a plan.

And then there are the feelings, too. The amorphous but ever-present pressure in John’s chest, something like love but feeling like more, something wholly and ridiculously indescribable. He doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t know where they stand, but here they are, going through their shared history together, deciding what remains and what goes. 

They’re deciding on paint colors for the main room in C, choosing childproofing devices, furniture without sharp edges, arguing about whether Rosie prefers stewed carrots or blueberry puree.

It’s more than domestic, it’s partnership. A domestic partnership. Without some of the more tangible benefits.

Benefits that John finds himself unable to stop thinking about. He’s far from a prude, and certainly no longer makes self-deprecating judgments against himself simply for admiring Sherlock’s arse, or wondering what his cock would feel like on his tongue. But it’s not just that, it’s thinking of how they would feel sitting together on the sofa, thigh to shoulder; wondering if Sherlock would stand a cuddle on a Sunday morning; deciding on bedsheet colors; figuring out what he would say if he asked Sherlock to become Rosie’s legal guardian. Dozens of properly, soppily domestic things that John craves from Sherlock. 

It’s not as though John isn’t nearly one hundred percent certain that his feelings are reciprocated, but it’s been eight years and everything that comes with that. It’s six and a half–give or take a few months–years of John quietly coming to terms with the amount of space Sherlock takes up in his heart. It’s very nearly a decade of stiff-upper-lip British composure, keeping himself so tightly bottled up that he’s at a loss for how to let any little trellis of what he feels peek out into the light of day. Because what would that even look like?

With an audible swallow, and a fleeting look at Sherlock’s face in profile, he returns to his box. There are several newspapers, which he flips through, before he finds a neon pink post-it note stuck to an advertisement for chimney liners. “Sherlock, what’s this?”

“Hmmm?”

“Rayson Thurbridge? It says two thousand pounds, question mark. Question mark. Were you ever paid, by this person, who by the way sounds like a villain out of a superhero film?”

Sherlock shrugs, rifling through the box before him and then kicking it with one foot, sliding it across the floor to where John is seated. It skitters to a stop just before John’s ankles and he rolls his eyes. 

“Two thousand pounds, Sherlock, and you don’t know if you were ever paid it? Christ, must be nice not to have to worry about money.”

“It is,” comes the distracted reply, as he peels another water-warped cover off of a storage box. “And if you hadn’t noticed, you were never asked to pitch in for hydro or electric, or really any of the repairs, come to think of it.”

John harrumphs. “You mean the repairs on the damage that you incurred?”

Sherlock grunts, heaving another box on top of the two in front of him. “More newspapers,” he mumbles as he slides those three over to John as well.

John smirks, but shakes his head, flicking the flimsy top off of the top one. “Oh, so is that it, then? I’m going through everything you deem boring?”

“Isn’t that generally how it goes?” Sherlock asks, smirk evident in the tone of his voice.

John laughs, gamely digging into the contents, but not before wadding up a page of the Times and tossing it at Sherlock’s head. It connects with his temple and then skitters beneath the temporary folding table they’ve set up. “Bastard. I actually had to pay Molly this go-round, you know. She’s through with the whole unpaid sitting, unfortunately.”

“Or, more likely, you felt terrible at having not paid her the last, oh, seven times she offered?”

“Shut up,” John says on a grunt, struggling to his feet. “Well, since I have the night off and you’re not being helpful in the slightest,” he grunts again, working the tension out of his thighs, briefly, and then clapping his palms on the sides of his legs, “you might as well make this worth my while.”

Sherlock’s eyes cut to his, but he says nothing.

“Still have that scotch from what’s his name after you solved the… zoo… thing?”

Sherlock’s mouth curves up. “We solved it, and it’s Lagavulin. It’s in the cupboard above the stove.” Sherlock shakes his head, “How do you forget a name like Maximillian Aurenthal Zephyr?”

John chuckles at that, grabbing the bottle down. “Says the man who still cannot seem to remember that Mercury is a planet…”

“John.”

“Yeah?” John casts a glance over his shoulder.

“Do shut up.”

John barks a laugh and pads over to the sink. He takes a moment to quickly clean two of their heavy, quality glass tumblers.

He pours them each a standard finger, knowing the dangers, and knowing his limits. Heis getting back to the place where he can enjoy a nice drink without fear of overdoing it.

When he returns to the living room, Sherlock’s back is against the sofa where John had just been, one knee bent, as he flicks through photos taken at crime scenes over the years. “I must have wasted so much ink, printing these... “

John hunkers down on the sofa, snatching the photos from Sherlock’s hand. They’re bound together by twine, each individually wrapped, a post-it note denoting the more obvious details of the case. Sherlock must have meant to file them, but as his life–their life–unraveled, he must have forgotten. Some are proper police photos and others are from Sherlock’s phone, or from John’s small, efficient digital camera. Most are gory, some are artful and others are just plain confusing. 

The images bring fond memories to the forefront of John’s mind; a simpler time, a happier time, a time when they were both unencumbered by so much pain. John binds the whole lot of them together with a rubber band and tosses them into a box he’s specifically marked to keep. Perhaps years down the line he’ll sort them all into an album, maybe use some as examples in the book he keeps daydreaming about writing.

For a moment, John watches the back of Sherlock’s head, decides upon adjectives, descriptive language he might use to capture the ethereal nature of Sherlock Holmes. Taking a sip of the fine scotch, he leans forward and heaves a bundle of newspapers into his lap, beginning to sort through them. Pausing periodically as he unearths new memories, he takes a few pulls of his drink, letting the warmth diffuse in his belly and the bite of the alcohol open up his nasal airways. 

With each passing publication, John wonders what specifically about the case caused Sherlock to keep the media that was printed surrounding it. He wonders if Sherlock had felt sentimental. t’s silly, but John hopes he had felt that way, as John himself is feeling that way currently, reliving their combined past. It’s another few minutes of glancing at newsprint before John finds something so noteworthy that he has to speak up.

“Jesus,” John almost chokes on his own tongue. He holds the publication up in front of his face, and finds himself bursting into surprised laughter. “Oh my god, why on earth did you keep this?” He holds out the paper for Sherlock to see.

Sherlock looks at the cover, and does his best not to laugh, sucking his lips in until his mouth is a tight line. “Vanity.” He shrugs, and whenhe meets John’s gaze he breaks, dissolving into deep rumbles of laughter.

“Seven times a night, christ, they couldn’t have come up with a more believable number?”

Pressing his lips together, his face is a mask of reprimand. “It’s a tabloid John, ‘believable’ is in direct opposition with their mission.”

John returns his attention to the cover:Sherlock in the deerstalker splashed across it. “Still… seven times…” John shrugs, leaves the paper out on the cushion beside him and moves on. 

A few long minutes of silence later, interspersed with the quiet noise of swallowing, Sherlock asks, “You think it’s too outlandish?”

John processes the implication behind the question before his face pinches in disbelief. “Come on.”

Sherlock tips his head back and around so that John can see his face. He raises his brow, but does nothing to neither confirm nor deny any of the hundreds of thoughts that come to John’s mind. It’s impossible, that a man of Sherlock’s age could… 

John feels his cheeks flame, both from the idea that Sherlock has sex at alland from the images his mind unwittingly conjures for him. There’s a hard pit in his stomach, something uncomfortable, that always seems to form whenever John thinks about Sherlock being intimate in any way at all with a person other than himself. 

He can feel his face racing through different emotions, and he can’t stop it. Confusion, anger, sadness, disbelief, frustration, they all coalesce as he says, “Wait…with…no…”

Sherlock coughs out an embarrassed laugh, but maintains eye contact with John after a brief glance away. “Not with—no, not with Janine.”

John can’t figure out what to do with his entire body, so he blindly reaches for his drink and takes a pull. He swallows too quickly, nearly chokes, and flushes at that, as well. “Oh, alright, I… nevermind, I—“

Sherlock clears his throat, and takes an absurdly prim sip from his own glass of Lagavulin. His tongue even takes a pass over his lips before he speaks, “More to the point, not with any woman.”

John blinks, rests the paper in his hands on the sofa. “Oh. Right.”

Sherlock faces back around, his gaze directed to the recently re-tiled fireplace. “Right?”

Pressing his lips together, John opts to put the glass back on the table, settle his suddenly damp palms on denim-clad thighs. “Yeah no, makes uh, makes sense.”

Sherlock smirks. “It makes sense?”

John smirks back, shifting so that he’s resting more loosely. “The hair product, the couture clothes, the penchant for the dramatic. You’re a stereotype!”

For one brief second Sherlock looks stricken, and then they’re both falling back into delighted laughter. John watches him, the way his eyes crinkle and narrow, the way his jaw moves and creates a few more chins, the way his pupils shine and his stomach expands and contracts with the force of his mirth. 

And it settles, like the very first sip of an exquisite vintage, in the pit of his belly: the knowledge that he’s a man in love. It’s as simple as that.

“Why am I not offended?” Sherlock finishes on a soft, petering-out chuckle.

“Because it’s true?” John ventures and with a bit of effort, slides down from the sofa to sit next to Sherlock on the hard floor, a foot of space between them. Sherlock purses his lips, but raises his glass as John picks his up, and they touch them together in a tacit understanding.

“So,” John says, the tone of his voice quiet in the wake of such raucous laughter. “Vanity.”

“Hmmm,” Sherlock hums his agreement as he runs the whiskey between his bottom lip and teeth. It’s a challenge, lobbed at Jon, “Surprised?”

He clears his throat, passes his tongue over his lips, acknowledging that they’re hovering just on the precipice of getting into an area they don’t talk about. “The vanity thing? No, just, you know…seven times. In a night.”

Sherlock huffs out a laugh, his head tipping back to rest on the couch. “One would think that with a nickname Three Continents Watson, that this would be of no surprise. Unless.”

“Ah, no. Never seven times, not with… no. I’d say that’s impressive, but I do know you and your penchant for dramatic hyperbole. So.”

“So,” Sherlock agrees and they fall into silence once more. 

John works his jaw from side to side. It seems as though Sherlock is willing to talk about it, but John doesn’t know how to ask. They’re one another’s closest and most intimate friend; they’re truly partners. But talking about sex, talking about love even, it’s never been something they’ve tread near. 

It’s frustrating, because John knows, indelibly, that he’s tip-toeing on one side of an invisible line. Sherlock remains on the other side, just as close, ready to take the step, but hesitating. If John doesn’t bring it up–Sherlock won’t, he won’t–where will that leave them? He can’t do it anymore, he realizes. The longing stretches taut and uncomfortable in his chest; he hates this feeling, and he can’t help but think that it’s all so unfair.

Which is ridiculous, John realizes. ll he has to do it seize the moment, capitalize on it, shine a light on what they both know is there, and a dozen other metaphors for working up the goddamned nerve to just tell Sherlock how he feels. How they both feel. Instead of seizing that moment he knows he has, John swirls the liquid in his glass, watches it.

Sherlock does much the same, just a short distance away. 

“With?” John eventually asks, immediately presses the glass to his mouth to stop mumbling apologies and pack-pedalling that immediately spring to mind. 

Sherlock turns to him, his face completely blank; their gazes hold, as though to ask, Now? Finally? We’re doing this? and Sherlock takes a deep breath, doesn’t look away. “Simon. Just before… the first time I went in.”

John knows, or had suspected, that Sherlock had been through rehab before, though he never speaks of it. “Ah,” is all he says in response, his blood rushing uncomfortably in his ears, his heartbeat picking up. 

Sherlock takes a breath, forges on. “He was…trying to date me, or save me,” his lip catches between his teeth in a strange display of self-deprecation. “Both, come to think of it. I haven’t thought about him in…” Sherlock blinks, seemingly startled out of the memory he’d been wading into. “Sentiment.”

“Sorry,” John says, but he’s not. “I mean. If you want to, you can…” But John doesn’t want him to stop, John wants to know everything, everything about Sherlock. He wants this conversation to mean something, wants it to be the catalyst for more.

There’s an audible swallow, not scotch, just Sherlock preparing. John is glad for the noise, for the intent of it, because it gives him a moment to prepare for whatever Sherlock is about to say. “Just, he was ABD, and was going back to finish up his PhD. He frequented the only club that I could get… well. He was there. I was there. We met.”

John can’t help but chuckle at that. “Straightforward.”

“Shut up,” Sherlock says with a sad smile. “He bought me a drink. A drink I didn’t want. I wanted—was there for—something else. Wanted, ehm, a quick trip to the loo would be a way to put it without being crass,” and he smiles at that too, at withholding a deliberately obscene description.

But John wants to hear him say it, wants the truth of all this. He wants to strip everything down between the two of them, as bare bones as he’s able. “Oh well, you know I can’t handle crass, so—”

“I wanted to have a quick fuck in the bathroom, satisfied?”

John is quiet. Sherlock clears his throat. “I needed someplace to stay, to crash, really. I didn’t have money and. And he had a spare room. A spare room I never used. That was… nine months of my youth. Later youth. Early twenties,” Sherlock corrects, corrects again with a shake of his head. “Editing his research, sleeping in his bed, eating his food, being introduced to his friends. Can you imagine? It was all so stunningly… normal.” He blinks, realigns his legs and sinks further towards the floor. 

“Can you imagine?” he repeats, and John starts to feel as though he’s having an out of body experience: Sherlock talking to him about intimacy, and repeating himself. 

It’s almost as though the floor of the sitting room is shifting, contorting, transferring them into another dimension, where this conversation is the only thing, the most important thing, happening in the world at the moment. 

His fingers find an unfinished patch of wood on the floor and he runs the pad of his right middle and index over the little indentation, his skin just almost catching on the minute splinters. “Nine months. That’s.”

“Yes.”

“Good,” John ventures, manages to state it as fact, rather as question. 

“But. One evening, not seven times but… five,” Sherlock finishes. “Thus…the article was a stretch, but not much of one.” That sad smile is back, Sherlock looking down into his lap, into the scant sip of alcohol left in his glass. “Then I went to Meadowview—dreadful name, dreadful place—and he went to America.”

John feels the strangest urge, to get Simon’s last name, to snoop around on the internet for him, to find out what he looks like. He wants to know more about this man who apparently captured Sherlock’s attentions and affections for more than a short moment. He must be something special, John reckons, and simultaneously takes his own estimation of himself in Sherlock’s regard, down a few pegs. 

“Stop thinking,” Sherlock mutters as he finishes off the last of his scotch. “Stop…wondering. It’s pointless.”

“Why?” John asks.

“You’re nothing alike. You’re nothing…” he sighs and torques his body, sits cross-legged on the floor. “It was something, at the time. He was…something to me. But, just a memory now, one I haven’t given thought to in years.” John’s eyes narrow, as he picks apart Sherlock’s words, wondering still how he and Simon-from-the-past can be compared. “There’s rarely a moment when I’m not thinking of you,” Sherlock finishes quickly, a surprising admission, something John hadn’t ever hoped to be spoken so plainly. 

A quick little sip of air sucks in through his nose and then John is slowly releasing it; it takes some effort now to huff it out through his mouth. He couldn’t have anticipated this—what he would do in this moment, how he would forget to breathe, how his mind would stutter and stop even as his stomach flipped a dozen times. 

He’s well into his forties, and he hasn’t felt like this—buoyant, expectant, petrified—in an age. Not with Mary, not before, not since his secondary school days, and even that is fleeting. Now, John feels cleft in two, like he’s empty and opening and wanting Sherlock to mend him back together, fill him up. 

“I,” he says, a bit breathless. “I don’t know when it happened but, I’ve had that, too, for a while. Thinking of you,” John clarifies. “Not a while, ehm, since before, you know.”

Sherlock nods, just once, chin to chest and back. His fingers drag the heavy glass across the floor, in the small void between his bent knees. “Years, John.”

That’s when Sherlock looks up at him, gaze open and calm, a hint of sadness in the curve of his mouth. Expectant. Waiting for John’s reaction to an obvious overture.

Sherlock swallows again.

“I,” John breathes, experiencing a stab of pain right down the center of himself, at reliving how he felt at that time. He almost can’t function for a moment, recalling how he’d felt as though he had been imploding in the weeks after Sherlock’s death, at all of the things he’d admitted, placed firmly in the “if only Sherlock were still alive,” hindsight pile. 

John had promised himself, that if he could have Sherlock back even for a day, he’d unload all of the complicated, fractured, fucked up parts of his heart for Sherlock to dissect and accept or reject as he pleased. John had reasoned, in the weeks after Sherlock’s death, that if he’d just have the chance to say any of the millions of things contained in his heart, he might have had a chance at moving on.

But even then, mired in his grief, months after he’d watched soil dropped carelessly onto the lid of the casket, John knew he was doomed for eternity to live with lovesick regret. And it’s that— his recollection of the promises he’d made to himself, tear-streaked and burrowed into bed—that make his mouth move before he can think any better of it.

“I loved you, you know, before then,” John says, his heart nearly bursting with the long-held truth, nodding to himself, as though he’s encouraging himself along. “It’s uhm, I know it and I’ve felt it, but you should… know it. It’s uhm, it’s time, I think.”

John finds himself shocked at how calm he suddenly feels; he doesn’t even register a higher heart rate when he meets Sherlock’s gaze. “Not just past tense, though, not…I do, now. It’s… sometimes I think it’s just ridiculous, because this is it. Here. You and I. Just…easy as that, together. Does that…does that make sense?”

Sherlock unfurls, stretches his legs out before him and leans his head back on the sofa cushion, and turns his head to look at John once more. “Your penchant for elaborate, saccharine language doesn’t extend to declarations of love, I see.”

John rolls his eyes. “Sherlock—”

“It does make sense. And it…doesn’t. Sometimes, and forgive my own foray into hyperbole, but, often times it seems as though I was simply existing, waiting for you to arrive in my life. Which is a stupidly, tragically romantic and an intrinsically fictionalized way to say… you’re the only possible thing I’ve felt as though I’d been fated for.”

John blinks at him.

“I don’t believe in fate,” Sherlock explains, places his palm on the floor so that their pinky fingers are just brushing. “But there are things… certain principles and amorphous ideas that I’d never considered before you.”

John twists, brings himself closer to Sherlock, has to almost, or he fears he’ll lose his mind. “What else?”

“Oh,” Sherlock says, as though it’s off-hand, though the waver in his voice gives him up immediately. “Love, for instance. Stability. The notion that a person could want to be around, with, alone with one person for the rest of their living days. Pedestrian, I know, but, the idea that our lives would extend, together, well beyond middle age...” 

John laughs and that, takes a moment to shuffle just beside Sherlock now, both of them with their heads back against the cushion, their faces just far enough apart that they can catch the other’s eye if need be. It’s bizarre, completely, the route that this conversation has taken, but John doesn’t backtrack, doesn’t try to steer them on some sort of course.

This can be as messy and stilted as they want it to be, as long as they finally let it all go. All of it. And this admission, this heaving complexity of a real future together is incredibly important, heady, something that absolutely needs to be clarified and spoken aloud. 

“So you’re saying…” John clears his throat, feels as though he should say this as clearly and succinctly as possible. He speaks slowly, in clear, meted words. “You want to,” he looks for the words, works his jaw, and tries to find any other way to say it. When he can’t, John gives a sigh and says, “Grow old together. You, me, Rosie... everything that comes with that.”

Sherlock sighs heavily through his nose, finally reaching across–John’s eyes carefully watching the movement–to cup John’s right knee with his palm. It’s the most forward, tactile act Sherlock has made since John’s breakdown in this very room. It’s causes a tsunami to well up within John, make him feel as though his body needs to crash into Sherlock’s, throw the together, meld them. “You speak as though any of that is unappealing. There’s little I don’t know about you John, and nothing I wouldn’t accept as simply a part of the man you are. I, on the other hand…” Sherlock folds his hands in his lap, oddly prim and proper. 

“Huh?” John misses the heat of Sherlock’s finger instantly. 

Sherlock sighs, withering. “Self-deprecation is not attractive, or conducive to what we’re considering, currently.”

John rolls his eyes again; of course overt displays of emotion would knock Sherlock into some sort of robotic, nonsensical diatribe. “What the hell are you saying, Sherlock?” There’s no heat in the question, just honest inquiry.

“There’s nothing here, for you. There is nothing in me, about me, my life… for you.” There’s a waver in Sherlock’s voice, evidence of the fact that Sherlock is struggling with his words, how to accurately place how he feels. 

John considers this, that Sherlock doesn’t seem to believe that he’s good-enough for the just-barely-keeping-it-together human that John Watson is. It seems at once absurd and stunningly human of him. 

“The hell there is,” he mutters in return. John splays his right hand over his knee, spreading the maximum distance his fingers will allow, before he speaks. “Is there anything for you in a middle-aged, greying, single father of one, with no steady job and an addiction to danger?”

That causes the tiniest of smiles to tip Sherlock’s mouth. “John…”

“Hmm?” his elbow edges out, catches Sherlock in the side, a gentle prod.

“Are you, that is to say, there was Mary and Sarah and, that one with the hair and the other one with the eczema, but.” Sherlock’s eyes flash. “There were never any… men.”

“Not here, not in London, no.” It feels strange, not because he’s ashamed, but because he figured that Sherlock always knew—that Sherlock had already deduced every single thing about him. It’s doubly strange because he’s never discussed it aloud before, never felt the need to, and the fact that he’s doing it now, in his middle age, seems anachronistic. 

Sherlock’s face twists, as though he’s upset with himself for not calling it to attention before. He composes himself, looks all of prim and proper when he poses, “So. You’re.”

“Maybe,” John says, his voice going a little gravely and odd, something sifting in there, and he has to clear his throat. “Might be, probably, yeah, actually. Probably I am, yeah, but that doesn’t matter right now.”

“Doesn’t it?” Sherlock’s eyes are clear and too close and beseeching. John realizes that it matters to Sherlock in a way that it has never mattered to him. Sexuality. John has been able to slip through life, bedding anyone who was open to him; Sherlock, on the other hand, has reserved this part of himself so steadily, that John doesn’t know what to think, or to say. It’s a conversation that they’ll have to unpack later, because he wants to know, wants to know it all. But there will be time for that later.

“Surprised you didn’t know from the start,” John mentions, the tone lightening a bit, giving them a moment to breathe, reassess. 

“I… I’d suspected, but I hadn’t dared hope. After our initial——” Sherlock huffs, frustrated with himself. “I told you I was married to my work, and…afterward, when I realized that you meant a great deal to me, I didn’t dare hope, it would have been…too difficult.”

“Oh.”

Sherlock’s voice is his normal cadence and tone when he continues on, “I’ve never particularly enjoyed the idea of yearning after a straight man, but I don’t believe it would have done me any good if I’d labored under the assumption that you could be attracted to me sexually. You’d always dated women.”

It strikes John as disastrously sad that Sherlock had felt very similarly for him, all of those years. Back in the past, when they’d both been too terrified of what it meant to be in love with the person they were in love with. He, with a mad, socially-awkward, genius of a waif, and Sherlock with a damaged ex-doctor with no real future on the horizon. 

John reckons that a psychotherapist would have a field day, with the two of them. 

He steers away from the tender, painful reality of their mutual pining, tries for another truth, “I want you to…” He takes a breath, acknowledges that this conversation is a mess, but thinks it’s important that Sherlock knows, “You saved my life, you know that.”

Sherlock’s voice has an edge to it, something close to anger, “No, John—”

“Yeah, you did. Took me years to give credit where it’s due, but…it all makes sense. You are… the best and wisest man I’ve ever known, told you that before. Still true now.” John swallows, glances to the floor, and stretches his left hand to mirror his right, on his left knee. “In the interest of getting it all out there, yeah? Because I don’t think, that after this conversation…we’re going to be the same. Please, just…”

“Just?”

John struggles with words, because he doesn’t know how to ask for one thing out of the countless things that he wants from Sherlock. It’s all a bit surreal, truly, that they’re having this conversation to begin with, very reasonably, with no-holds-barred, and it’s all catching up with John, how wildly foal-legged he suddenly feels. The words are coming, choppily, slowly, but they’re coming, and it’s almost easy. And then too, with the ease, is a feeling as though the fluidity of their admissions, the way they’re simply coming out with it might negate all of the suffering they’ve weathered together. 

The magnitude of what they’re discussing seems as though it shouldn’t fit within the walls of 221B. 

Sherlock sits up, turns just slightly, and regards John so closely that John is fairly certain that Sherlock could read everything he’s thinking. “Why now?” Sherlock whispers, face so close to John’s that their breath mingles.

“Because…” John licks his lips and straightens up to face Sherlock, crosslegged now too and close still. His back and hips will hurt like a bitch tomorrow given the odd position he’s seated in, but he doesn’t give much of a toss at present. He fixes Sherlock with a clean and open gaze. “Any longer could be too late and I…don’t want to miss this. Miss you.”

There’s a tic in Sherlock’s cheek, and then he’s smiling in such a bashful manner, it immediately renders in John the desire to gather him close and cuddle him up. Sherlock states plainly, as though he’s both caught in wonder and quite proud of himself, “Me.”

“Us, Sherlock. I don’t want to miss the chance for us.”

“Ah,” Sherlock says, his gaze falling briefly to John’s mouth; John catches the glimpse and smiles warmly.

Tentatively, John reaches across to brush Sherlock’s knee with his knuckles before pulling away. “I mean… it could be good.”

There’s a beat of pregnant silence before Sherlock speaks. “Brilliant,” he says suddenly and with no small amount of surprised wonder, his entire body language shifting from bashful and hopeful to instantly energized. He lights up the way he does when presented with a ten of a case. “Brilliant, it’s going to be.”

John’s thrown for a moment, by Sherlock’s change in posture–he’s sitting taller now, has reached out to cup his palms around John’s knees. It’s such a stark difference from five minutes ago that John almost asks him to wait a moment, to slow down. But if this is how it has to happen, all fits and starts and nothing at all like he imagined it, then so be it. “Is it?”

“Yes.” Sherlock breathes, and now he’s focused entirely on John’s mouth. There’s a space of silence that John’s body takes as a chance to light up every nerve within him, drag him to the edge of expectation. “Now, kiss me.”

John barks a laugh. “Course you’d be just as much of an arse when—“

“For christ’s sake,” Sherlock mumbles. He leans forward, and presses their mouths together. “Stop talking,” he says against John’s lips, breath gusting over John’s parted mouth.

John has to lean back, as his back begins to act up, but he takes Sherlock with him. They sink into it, this, their second kiss, and it turns warm and slow and lovely. It feels simultaneously like the most natural thing that has happened to him, and also the most important. 

Sherlock’s mouth slips open and John seizes his opportunity, deepening it, resting back against the sofa as Sherlock maneuvers to his knees and drapes himself over John. It’s an odd angle, to be sure, and Sherlock is pressing down on him, towering over him, but John finds he quite likes it. Hands go to hips–they want to go to Sherlock’s backside, but don’t stray that far–and Sherlock tips his head, falls deeper, changes the angle, and their tongues touch and retreat.

John is exhilarated, and pulls away panting, thrilled to find Sherlock heaving breaths just as heavily as he is. “God,” John says, touching his mouth to ensure that this all is actually happening.

“Yes,” Sherlock sighs, running his right hand through his hair, “God.”

John peeks up, lips pursed, and finds Sherlock wearing a completely blank expression. It’s only a beat before they’re giggling, John drawing Sherlock into his body and holding him fiercely close, face in Sherlock’s stomach as their giggles peter out. 

Sherlock pulls back, only slightly, and shimmies back until his arse if resting gently on John’s thighs. His forehead drops, resting against John’s and they breathe together. “That felt… too simple.”

John hums, his thumbs hooking just into the waistband of Sherlock’s trousers, against his back. “Doesn’t have to be hard, just has to be acknowledged. I think.”

Sherlock huffs a little laugh and moves to dot a kiss next to John’s left eye. “All those years,” Sherlock begins, and John takes a moment to become comfortable with Sherlock being sentimental; he’s a fragile being when he’s like this.

“We weren’t ready, we weren’t…no, we weren’t ready.” John sighs, turning his head a bit this way, a bit that, feels Sherlock respond, skin to skin. It’s quiet, it’s warm, it’s lovely and all a bit strange, just being this close, this together, in this flat. John savors it, pulls the scent of Sherlock deep into his lungs and doesn’t let go until he feels he might burst. 

Sherlock rests his cheek against the top of John’s head and smooths his thumbs down over the curve of John’s shoulders. It’s a long few minutes before either speaks, both seemingly too content to simply bask in the gentle moment. “We should finish up.”

“Electrician in the morning, right, yes.” John reluctantly allows his hands to fall away, allows Sherlock to shift back and then stand up. For a moment, John feels bereft and awkward, wonders if they’re missing something, if there’s something more they should do, another way to acknowledge the heavy, miasma of emotions between the two of them.

But then he realizes that they have time. They have all the time they want to suss all of this out. It doesn’t have to happen at once, doesn’t all have to be spoken of and absorbed tonight. It’s incredible, what that realization does to him; it feels like weight sloughing away, like he’s finally seeing the sun for the first time in months, finally breathing.

“Or…” posits Sherlock, hands on his hips, staring down at the chaos of the sitting room. 

John’s eyes flit to where Sherlock’s fingers bracket his hips, before sliding up to meet his gaze. “Or?”

“We could… leave it. We could store the boxes in the back hallway until…”

“Oh, yes, that’ll… yeah, alright.” His hand goes to the back of his neck. “Suppose I am, erm, a bit tired.”

Sherlock’s tongue passes over his bottom lip. “Right. Yes,” his cheeks are still just the slightest shade of pink. “Tired.”

There’s a brief beat of silence during which John feels so wrong-footed he imagines that he might actually fall over where he’s standing. 

“We’ve earned a lie-in tomorrow, or, even if we haven’t, I intend to have a lie-in anyway.” Awkwardness seeps into the moment. They are standing so close to one another with no idea what to do, until John reminds himself that there are no rules to follow. He doesn’t have to live up to anyone’s expectations but his own. 

John wets his lips, “Would you like that?”

“Like what?”

“Bit of a,” his right hand curls into a fist, uncurls just as quickly. “Lie in. With me.”

“Oh.” Sherlock stares at John for a long moment, his face starkly blank. “I. I suppose. That would be.” And he stops, mid-sentence, to blink. “Nice.”

“Alright.” John doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he lifts them from his sides a bit and then lets them fall.

“How will we?” Sherlock pauses, shifts minutely from foot to foot. “That is to say…” Sherlock’s mouth twists innocently and then he scowls, huffs through his nose. “Hell, would you like to sleep with me, this evening?” It’s smacks of formality to a point that John can’t help but tip his head back and chuckle; luckily, Sherlock follows suit. “This is all a bit…”

“Yeah,” John agrees. “We will… we’ll work it all out, I think. Uhm, but... in the meantime, yes.” John feels as though the very tips of his ears are absolutely on fire; his right hand creeps back to massage at the nape of his neck. “Yeah, I’d like to… sleep with you, yes.” John shakes his head at the ridiculousness of it all, looks to the ceiling, and grins. 

They’ve gotten eons better at talking, but there’s no truly smooth way to say any of it. They’ve been in love with one another so long that John thinks that maybe this is even more intimate than the sex–sex that he hopes will come sooner rather than later–but sleeping together was something completely different. 

“Are your,” John doesn’t know why he feels the need to speak. He’s never felt the need to fill space with words before, “sheets clean?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes, steps back into John’s personal space, and cups John’s elbows with his palms. He is so warm. “Stop stalling, you know they aren’t,” Sherlock whispers in earnest, and leans in to kiss the crest of John’s left cheekbone. “Go change into your frankly hideous pajamas and meet me in my room.”

John blinks, touched by the softness in Sherlock’s tone, in his touch. “There’s nothing wrong with my pajamas,” he whispers back.

“I beg to differ,” Sherlock says and steps away from John, smiling a bit bashfully. “Go.”

John climbs the steps up to the chaos of he and Rosie’s currently-shared room and pulls his bottoms and soft, distressed top from beneath his pillow. He’s careful about undressing, not wanting to rush it. He wants to get down to Sherlock as soon as possible, but there’s an element about all of this that requires savoring. The shifting from friends to lovers so keenly sweet, that he wants to keep the feeling in his chest for a moment longer, even as he wants to witness Sherlock curled beneath his sheets. 

His vest is folded and his jumper hung neatly in the closet; his jeans come next, slung over a wooden hanger and placed next to his other trousers. He stands in his pants for just a brief moment, and then he shucks those too, climbing into his sleep clothes with care. He glances in the small stand mirror atop his dresser and brushes his hair, regarding his appearance briefly before shutting the light and descending. 

The flat is dark, and it takes John’s eyes a moment to adjust. When they do, he catches a glimpse of Sherlock in the hallway, just outside his bedroom door, one hand on the doorjamb, the other hanging at his side. There’s no room to misinterpret what’s about to happen, with Sherlock is stood in his oldest pair of sleep bottoms–John observes things too–and white vee-neck shirt. They’re just going to be sleeping tonight. 

John finds that he has stopped walking, and takes a glance down at his own stockinged feet. 

“John?” his voice is so soft, as though the shadows are carrying it. 

“Hm?” John’s eyes take a moment, sliding across the floor until his gaze meets Sherlock’s feet and begins to trail up his body.

Sherlock swallows, glances into the depths of his room before glancing back. “Bed?”

John takes a breath and nods once, “Mmm hmm.” When he comes to stand in front of Sherlock, he takes another breath, reaches out and wraps his fingers around Sherlock’s wrists. “This is… god, I’m gonna be shit at this. You won’t mind, will you?”

Sherlock’s right cheek jumps and he gives John’s arms a little tug, and he’s already chuckling as he says, “No, John. I won’t mind.”

“Good,” John smiles, “Good, because–”

And Sherlock is slanting his mouth over John’s, moving gently and deliberately, two fingers just pressing into John’s law, guiding him. It’s something so slow that John feels as though they might be moving backwards through time, such a deliberate and decadent meeting of mouths. The shadowy silence of the hallway only serves to heightness the sweet rawness of it all.

The realization hits him that now, from here on out, he can do this–kiss Sherlock like he wants to, rest his hands on Sherlock’s body to provide comfort and pleasure. Sherlock’s tongue slicks in atop John’s and for a moment John thinks he may pass out from the sheer intensity of it all, the mental and physical realization that they can have this now. 

Sherlock pulls back for a shivery breath and John manages to say, “A man can only take so much, you know.” he begins, finishes on a weak little sigh. “We’re not going to do… anything… tonight.”

It’s a statement.

Sherlock pulls back a fraction, smooths his hands over John’s shoulders. “I want to. More than you could possibly know. I’m reasonably sure I’ve conjured every distinct possibility and nuance of…”

John blinks; there’s room for so many telling words here, but Sherlock finishes, “...making love to you.”

John blushes, making love. Words he never even imagined he’d hear Sherlock speak, nevermind in reference to the two of them. It hits him right upside the head. He can’t help but grin, attempting to take some of the heaviness out of the situation, his voice tinged with salaciousness when he says, “Every?”

Sherlock hums, his right thumb tracing the entire curve of John’s ear. “I’m a genius, John.”

“Don’t I know it,” John breathes, finding the courage to sling his arms loosely around Sherlock’s hips as they come together for a hug. “Filling your mind palace with all sorts of filth.”

Sherlock’s chuckle rumbles through John’s bones. “I had to add an entire wing, constructing it was a monstrosity. Moving all of those ideas in there…”

“Don’t you worry,” John says into Sherlock’s skin, right at the base of the vee of his shirt. His voice holds a bravado he doesn’t quite know the origin of. “I’ll help you… clean them all out.”

“How kind,” Sherlock breathes, humor sweet on the crests of his syllables. “But not tonight.”

John hums back, affirms, “Not tonight.”

Sherlock swallows, squeezes John’s shoulders one last time before separating their bodies entirely. “Care to see my bedroom?”

“Would love to,” John nods, feeling incredibly wrung out all of a sudden. He feels lighter, too, having aired such a wealth of emotions tonight, but due to the conflicting impulses in his mind and body, he’s exhausted. Sherlock steps in the room first, soft light from the bedside lamp the only illumination.

Sherlock has already folded back the duvet, and stands aside for John to look his fill. “Preferred side?” Sherlock asks, rather formally, and John shrugs. “I find that I sleep best on the far side; will the light from the loo bother you?”

His lips curl, and he feels himself smiling at the consideration that gives Sherlock’s trepidation away. “I’ll be fine.”

Sherlock nods his head once and then walks around the bed and climbs in quickly and efficiently. John takes a moment to take it in–Sherlock reclining in bed, sleepy and soft–before he follows suit.

On his back, he wiggles his arse and settles, bed clothing tucked up beneath his armpits. “First things first,” John says, shimmying closer to Sherlock beneath the sheets. “If I’d known about how comfortable your mattress was years ago…”

 

“That’s all it takes?” Sherlock asks, reaching over and switching off the light.

“That’s it,” John agrees, “I’m a sucker for a good mattress.”

“You tart,” Sherlock murmurs, shifting over onto his side, just as John does the same. It was the easiest thing, John’s palm covering Sherlock’s hand on the bed between them. “Don’t steal the covers.”

John smiles, curling his fingers just around the side of Sherlock’s pinky. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” They stare at one another, smiles mellowing into gentle little curves. Their breaths evening, blinks coming molasses slow. “Hey,” John breathes, his fingers tapping out over Sherlock’s skin.

“Hm?”

“I’m glad. That we finally.” He shrugs the best he can, on his side. “I’m glad for it.”

Sherlock turns his hand over so that the tips of his fingers are at John’s wrist and vice-versa, their heartbeats resting under the other’s fingerprints. “As am I.”

“Good.”

“Yes.”

“I should stop talking,” John huffs.

Sherlock nods, “Would be wise.” Sherlock taps against John’s skin a few more times. “I’m going to,” he gestures towards the wall with his thumb.

John nods, presses his lips together and then leans over, dotting a quick kiss to Sherlock’s mouth. “Okay, goodnight.”

Sherlock’s fingers find his hair and card through it once, “Goodnight, John.”

There’s some shuffling and rearranging of the bedding, and Sherlock turns away, his back to John, though his body so close the warmth seeps into John’s skin. It’s not cuddling, not exactly, but it’s so close that it stuns John. Baby steps, he reminds himself. 

John tucks the covers up beneath his arms and stares up at the ceiling. He can hear the errant drip from the kitchen sink, notes the sounds of the flat settling from this new space. John listens closely to Sherlock’s breath, glances over and watches the sweet movements of his body in sleep. 

It’s all a bit baffling, dumbfounding, exhilarating and terrifying, but as Sherlock snuffles and wriggles back, John decides to make a concerted effort to let it go. A slow breath blown out and John closes his eyes.

He may not sleep, but John finds himself relaxing, melting into the mattress and finding comfort in this bed, next to the man he’s finally begin to build with, again.


End file.
